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TRIUMF and DESY Take Home Top Prizes from the First Global Particle-Physics Photowalk

Joint News Release | For Immediate Release | October 14th, 2010

A sunburst image of a particle detector at Germany’s DESY laboratory and a black-and-white photograph of a nuclear-physics experiment at TRIUMF in Canada have won the top prizes in the first-ever Global Particle Physics Photowalk.

“As scientists, we’re excited by our work and our laboratory environment. What was amazing about this event was the opportunity to share that experience with the people who support and benefit from the research we do,” said Nigel S. Lockyer, director of TRIUMF. “Bringing it full circle to see what caught their eye and got their attention was the real treat. Art and science have serious parallels; we all struggle to look at things in new ways to generate new insights about what is really going on in our world.”

On August 7, more than 200 photographers had the opportunity to present a new view of physics by going behind the scenes at five laboratories in Asia, Europe and North America as part of the Particle Physics Photowalk. Following the event, photographers submitted thousands of images to local competitions at the participating laboratories, which included DESY, TRIUMF, CERN in Switzerland, Fermilab in Illinois, and KEK in Japan. Each laboratory selected their local winners, and forwarded the top three to compete in two global competitions organized by the laboratories in the spirit of friendly competition.

More than 1,300 photography enthusiasts voted online to name the people’s choice winners. Hans-Peter Hildebrant’s photograph of a wire chamber at DESY garnered the most votes, followed closely by Tony Reynes’ image of an accelerator operator on shift at Fermilab, and Matthias Teschke’s photograph of the HERA accelerator tunnel at DESY.

“I am an amateur nature photographer and the subject—technology—was a great challenge,” said Hans-Peter Hildebrandt, a lead technician at a German manufacturer. “You don’t get to see things like accelerators in tunnels very often, and I am really glad I took part in the photowalk. I spent a long time on the winning photo, took a series of 24 shots from different angles, positions and with different camera settings.”

A panel of international judges also selected three winners. The judges—photographers Stanley Greenberg from the US and Simon Norfolk from the UK, and accelerator physics student and sculptor Meghan McAteer—gave the top prize to Mikey Enriquez’ photograph of the 8Pi experiment at TRIUMF, second prize to Hildebrant’s wire-chamber photograph, and third prize to the “kissing lips”, a photograph of a pair of quadrupole magnets at the DESY laboratory taken by Heiko Roemisch.

“I saw a link for the Particle Physics Photowalk on someone’s Facebook wall, and the chance to walk around and see an actual particle physics lab up and close and with the sole purpose of taking photographs of it was hard not to take,” said 22-year-old Enriquez, a recent graduate of the photo-imaging program at Vancouver’s Langara College.

The winning photographs will be featured in the December issues of the particle physics publications the CERN Courier (www.cerncourier.com) and symmetry (www.symmetrymag.org). All five participating laboratories will also feature the global winners and their local photowalk selections in temporary exhibits in 2011.

“I think I can speak for all of DESY when I say that we are overwhelmed and proud that a total of three pictures taken during the photowalk at DESY won a total of four places,” said Prof. Dr. Helmut Dosch, Chairman of the DESY Board of Directors. “We always knew that our workplace is attractive, but it’s nice to see proof of this in both the jury and the public vote. We’re also especially proud that the world’s particle physics labs took to the suggestion of a global photowalk so enthusiastically and that all labs had such an amazing harvest of fascinating pictures.”

The Particle Physics Photowalk was organized by the InterAction collaboration, whose members represent particle physics laboratories in Asia, North America and Europe.

TRIUMF is Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. Located on the south campus of the University of British Columbia, TRIUMF is owned and operated as a joint venture by a consortium of the following Canadian universities, via a contribution through the National Research Council Canada: University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, Carleton University, University of Guelph, University of Manitoba, McMaster University, Université de Montréal, Queen’s University, University of Regina, Simon Fraser University, Saint Mary’s University, University of Toronto, University of Victoria, and York University.